“So this stick is actually a nanotech wand for people to wave around in an open space park which reveals a hidden museum and provides you information on the artefacts, get it?”
On the 23rd of May, I facilitated a speculative thinking workshop with 16 random people who showed interest on a public text message. The workshop was a game crafted to iterate an experience of a world in 2074. This world was devoid of purchasing and solely functioned on a colony sharing goals, skills and responsibilities to face adversities.
Our 16 valiant gamers were plunged into the speculative design fiction of Earth in 2074 where objects of need cannot be bought but crafted instead. For the game, I had created personas that indicated future jobs such as Nanomaterial Artisan or Vertical Farming Expert. Each table hosted two personas and one common ‘personal goal’. This goal could be Terrible Air Quality or Digital Detox as well. No hierarchy in goals in a household!
The Siolim Suburbs was home to a digital chef and a cybernetics expert, who’s mutual goal was managing their fatigue and energy
The estate was home to a vertical farming specialist and a nanomaterial artisan who hoped to prepare & recover from cyberattacks
The colony in its entirety had certain goals to accomplish to push themselves closer to a utopian state. This may involve cultural cohesion within the community, averting infighting and friction, or resilience against epidemics and natural calamities.
The residents may choose to upskill themselves, collaborate between each other and imbue junk with a narrative to help solve challenges efficiently. If they build an object for a personal goal, but outsource it to the community, they may consider that same object solving a colony goal as well.
The real play was the colony goals, where as a colony, individuals with varied skills must come together to build a better society. Those goals involved Cultural Cohesion, Resilience, or Energy Efficiency. These holistic goals defended the colony against potential tragedies like a Riot or a Sandstorm.
End of the day the goal was to come together over skills, form inter household teams to build objects for each other's goals. Building required two people or more, where all the skills of these personas must match what they wish to build. (For example: I want to build a kit to help denizens of this dying planet with planting vertical gardens in their houses).
Narrating the conditions and the gameplay for the workshop.
To construct and convey this design fiction to the participants, I decided to build a couple of artefacts that express Terra 2074, such as this optical record player, A throwback to an old time using pieces of the present and tech of the future. Alongside that was a ‘photosynthesis optimizer’ on a plant since 2074 has ‘fewer sources of photosynthetic energy’ and so on.
The workshop was a closed loop system to introduce worldbuilding through game like elements and initiate idea generation in individuals who had no prior expertise in creative fields.
My mission for this experiment was to better understand how individuals can ignore their occupational constraints and build openly in a context created by me with parameters and powers. This mechanic taps into the internal playfulness of a person and keeps them engaged knowing what is at stake. The mechanic proceeded to foster a co-creative colony to address colony as well as each other’s household goals.
The magic of the game was the callback to reality towards the end. The goals and challenges in Terra 2074 were actually imitations of the challenges today. The junk used in the junkyard was actually junk from today. The reflective period at the conclusion of the workshop highlighted the striking similarities to present day reality and participants took home an added notion of how they could craft a context at home or at work and redefine their relationships through skill sharing and relationships with objects around them.
